John Ross on Mexico
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross09062006.html
September 6, 2006
Adios, To the Fox! Death of the Mexican Presidency By JOHN ROSS
Mexico City.
The tableau of 155 leftist deputies and senators storming the tribune of
congress here September 1 to prevent President Vicente Fox from
delivering
his sixth and final State of the Union address (the “Informe”) should be
mandatory viewing for members of both houses of the U.S. Congress
who, year
after year, burst into servile applause for George Bush when each
January he
imposes his own infernal Informe upon the citizens of Gringolandia.
One crucial political distinction between these two distant neighbor
nations
is the presence of a third party in the Mexican mix, one that at least
purports to be left of the center. Swindled out of the presidency by
fraud
this past July 2, the party of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO)–
the Party
of the Democratic Revolution or PRD–appears to have broken with the
political class and traditional cronyism.
It is not that the PRD’s hands are clean its legislators have regularly
prostituted their wares - but in the wake of the stolen election and
having
been frozen out of any power positions in the brand-new congress despite
being Mexico’s second political force, the Party of AMLO has little
to lose,
and is suddenly speaking its truth to power, a singular position for any
politico right or left.
Despite rampant corruption, regular vote stealing, and authoritarian
tendencies, Mexico’s multi-party system makes U.S. “democracy” with its
two-headed single party rule, look a lot more like Idi Amin’s Uganda
than
what the Boston tea party had in mind for the future citizens of the
United
States of North America.
The spectacle of elected officials being pissed off enough to stare down
tin-plate potentates like President Vicente Fox topped off weeks of
scuffling in and around the 10 kilometer steel wall Mexican troops had
thrown up around the Legislative Palace to keep Lopez Obrador’s die-hard
supporters from congregating in shouting distance of the congress of the
country. On the government side of the barricade, 6000 preventative
police
(drawn from the military) and Fox’s own presidential guard or the Estado
Mayor had turned the congressional precinct into a war zone. One side in
this standoff was equipped with clubs, electric shields, tear gas, water
cannons, light tanks, live ammunition, and snipers up on the
rooftops. The
other only with its dreams and its “coraje” (righteous anger.) Guess
which
side won?
[…]